This might constitute trademark violation, but it's also possible that they actually purchased all rights from the company that the original author of PyMOL founded (he died in 2009). The only thing odd about this is that they're using the same name for their product as for the open source project. PyMOL is a commercial product, but we make most of its source code freely available under a permissive license. That code is still available and is still being developed. The PyMOL code was originally licensed under a permissive (non-copyleft) open source license. I think you've misunderstood what's going on. If I'm not mistaken, there are probably a few legal firms that would be interested in this. I'd love to see the contents of their "licence". You probably just need a support contract, so what they're selling is probably entirely deceptive. You don't need a licence to use PyMol, since it's released under the Python licence. The licence is probably not for the code - you can still get that "free" as in "free beer", but if you want support from schrodinger, you'll have to pay them for a licence, which is how they cover the cost of support.Įdit: Adding to that, they probably shouldn't be calling what they're selling a licence. and are now offering to sell you a licence.
However, it looks like Schrodinger decided that they couldn't do better as a proprietary software company, and so they've taken the project under their wing.
You can still download the open source code, because open source code, once released, can't be close source. The project was started as an open source piece of code, with a reasonable licence. If i understand correctly, this is the usual "Open source licence" deal.